This is a different melody for 873. No harmonization, just a melody, although it also has naturals and flats. And the refrain is "Hosanna! Hosanna!" instead of "Rejoice! Rejoice!"

Hymns in the wild: when I'm not feeling well, I like to turn on classical music or something relaxing without distracting lyrics. Today I wasn't feeling well. So sure enough, the classical (online) radio station was playing "medley of 16th century hymn tunes." Nice! I recognized "Father, We Thank You."

This isn't part of a cohesive mini-section, but it's yet another adaptation of Psalm 23, which as I've mentioned is not too long so you can stretch it out verse-by-verse. There are some second-person issues; to get the feminine rhymes to be consistent, you have to use rhymes like "leadeth/feedeth," "bestoweth/floweth," and then the other verses are like "beside me/guide me," "sought me/brought me," "never/forever" (twice).

The tenor/alto crossover is one of those things that I would not have expected to start tracking at the beginning of this blog, and yet keeps showing up with surprises. Towards the end of the third line, the tenors and altos overlap, okay. Then on the last chord of the line, the basses and altos overlap on middle C, and the tenors and sopranos overlap on the E-flat above it. Crossover action!

Meanwhile, on hymns in the wild, I was at an indoor service today where we sang hymns as a group for the first time since the pandemic hit here. But the selections were pretty different than the Lutheran books we're using; I get the feeling that both "In the Garden" and "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" are pretty popular in some traditions, but neither show up in the ELW (or its main predecessors), and I get the feeling some of my associates would dismiss them as "too cheesy/sentimental." (This may be just me trying to work out my ambivalence. But hey, it's been over a year, I'm ready to sing whatever!)

The lyricist's name is "Muus," which I think is pretty awesome. Double U's! Is it pronounced like "Moose"? If he were a baseball player, would people say they were yelling Muuuuuus instead of booing him?

Translation is by committee, so I'm not sure if the rhymes are as repetitive in Dutch. But the rhyme scheme is ABABA; the B's are feminine rhymes that turn out to be masculine-in-disguise, the A's are masculine. And they repeat between verses: we get stuff like "dead/head/bread," "bread/fed/dead," "dead/bread/dead." At this point it's so repetitive that it loops all the way around back to charming! That's why it's in the "awesome" category.

Meanwhile, on hymns in the wild, we had this hymn for Good Friday that's addressed in part not to Jesus or to our neighbors, but to the cross itself, as if praying for it to treat Jesus' body respectfully. On the one hand, this is bizarre timing-wise. (I have an uncle who has opinions about whether you can cheer for a sports game you're watching on tape delay, versus watching live on TV where your cheers won't be heard either way--but that's for hours, not millennia!) On the other, the miracle of Easter transcends space and time; not only does Christ's sacrifice change the entire universe, but maybe we can envision the cross itself as reaching beyond that physical moment so that we can address it "contemporaneously."

Not too familiar with this one, but it seems to have a somewhat repetitive alto part (and not-quite-as-repetitive soprano part). The music is by Carolyn Jennings, who did this cool anthem arrangement. And it's sort of self-referential in the sense of "music is a way we can praise God." (There will be more in this vein.)

Meanwhile on hymns in the wild, it was Transfiguration today, which means we sang hymns like 314 and 315. Not only do these both have the same meter and the same topic, but to me their melodies' patterns of rising and falling feel similar (even though they're not really), so I kind of have them merged in my head.

So I have no idea how I stumbled across this a couple months ago, maybe it was on a hymn page I was Googling for this blog or a synod page I was Googling for something else. But it turns out that the composer of this hymn (and a few other hymns in this volume) is a repeated sexual harasser. D:

Lots of churches and church bodies are making the choice to not sing his compositions, going forward. I think this is a great decision! If he were thrown in jail without a trial or prevented from publishing lyrics on his own blog, sure, that might be a violation of freedom of speech, but the opportunity to have your works performed in a public setting is a privilege, not a right. There are plenty of good hymns out there. And given the choice between performing a song by "this guy who is a known repeated sexual harasser" or "how about someone else," I think "someone else" wins every day of the week and twice on Sunday. (Which is when you're usually performing hymns anyway.)

However, I also think this might be a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Because in several of those posts/announcements, the context has been along the lines of "we don't want to perform his songs because they may be triggering to people who he abused." I certainly hope no one would be deliberately attempting to trigger survivors of abuse! But the thing about triggers is, in many cases they don't behave "rationally" or along predictable lines. A song by an innocuous person could be triggering to someone if it was associated with a traumatic event, just like any other kind of sensory stimuli linked with that traumatic event could be triggering. Should we refuse to sing (insert whatever song here) because it might be someone's trigger? This may be slippery-slopey, but I feel like emotional versions of the heckler's veto are increasingly common in the circles I run in and I don't want that trend to continue. (And again, nobody should feel like they ought to perform this guy's songs just 'cause, just like nobody should feel like they need to screen a movie by a known harasser at a film festival just 'cause! It's just this reasoning that seems specious.)

--

On "hymns in the wild," we did in fact sing "Lift Every Voice And Sing" today, and the pastor even suggested we stand for it (on zoom), which is obviously the first time we've been like "stand for the hymn!" in months and months. :D

I have a specific story to tell about this one, namely, the choir anthem arrangement I sang a couple times. Different melody, various harmonization for the men's and women's parts. There was a short piano introduction before the men came in with the first verse. And the introduction was playing the melody of the first phrase, for almost exactly its full length--but it got cut short, so if the men weren't paying attention, they would come in a measure late or so. The copy of the sheet music I had had been previously assigned to a man who had made a note to warn himself about this. Leading to the very mixed messages of:

"Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus" "Beware of entrance!"

Maybe we're not really expecting him that much.

Back to the top!

Shannon density is fairly low--the first lines are fairly distinct across the verses but the second lines are repeated from verse 1/2 and then 3/4. The fact that there's only one Korean verse and four English ones makes me suspect that there weren't really that many different words to begin with, although maybe the translators were just like "the Anglophones aren't going to know the difference between an o and an o with a curve on top of it anyway, let's just leave it at one verse."

The alto part is fairly interesting, inasmuch as it goes down to the low G which isn't fairly common. (That's one of the rare cases where they actually overlap with the tenors--the soprano/alto split would be too wide for me to play on the piano, except it'd be fine because the altos would be just down in the left hand with the tenors.)

On "hymns in the wild," I was reading a (very interesting) biography of Jackie Robinson and his religious influences, and it went in depth about Branch Rickey's Methodism. Apparently he also considered "There's A Wideness In God's Mercy" one of his favorites. Good taste.

How's the rhyme scheme?

Pretty dense--it's lines of 8 syllables, but they mostly rhyme internally. (delight/unite, etc.) That does mean there's significant repetition (free/he, enemy/see, be/victory, misery/free; jubilation/salvation/nation, adoration/nation/consolation).

I also like the use of "speed" as a verb, not "break the speed limit" but "spread quickly."

Merry Christmas Eve! The Cambridge service of Lessons and Carols was today (nerds), and yes, they did sing the text of "Angels from the Realms of Glory" to the tune I associate with "Angels We Have Heard on High"!

When is this song typically sung?

Well, sometimes on Palm Sunday or Good Friday the Gospel will just be a long reading from the Passion story (skipping the sermon), and the long text is broken up by songs. So you might sing a few verses of this, then later a few more verses.

When else?

To make a very long story somewhat short, my church growing up has this creepy looking, fairly large, baby Jesus sculpture. The pastors dug it out some years ago to prank each other by "surprising" their colleagues with it in various places around church. Since my siblings and I, as preachers' kids, were there very often and had the run of the place, we obviously got in on this too, and over the years the pranking escalated. One year we left it on a high window ledge overlooking the courtyard and...didn't expect it to have crashed to the ground by the time it was discovered. So my mom and her colleagues, recognizing exactly what had gone down (uh, figuratively and literally in this case), made a lot of allusions to "Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas!" etc. over staff meetings.

How's the Spanish translation?

Okay. Mostly (in both languages) it's just talking about "your light," "the light," "eternal light," so there isn't much of a rhyme scheme to try and keep consistent.

"[my heart is in] deep anguish" feels a little less concrete than the Spanish text, which I think is talking about "bleeding"?

What about "I" versus "we"?

That feels like something that could easily have been changed to make the translation flow more easily, but it's actually in both versions. Verse one goes from talking about "my heart" to "if you leave us," and verse two goes from "I follow your footsteps" to "guide us."

Meanwhile, on hymns in the wild, I attended a Lutheran church from a somewhat more conservative denomination today, and they had even more verses to "Just As I Am." None of the ones that were cut from ours felt particularly offensive, but it was just a lot in terms of the "second person thous and thees trying to be old-timey," so I can see why they tightened it up.